Automated appraisals may be less biased and give more accurate property value estimates, according to a new working paper by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Policy Analysis and Research. This is especially true in rural areas where there are fewer comparable stats and more heterogeneity across homes, said the authors, Alexander Bogin and Jessica Shui. In fact, the data suggest that more than 25 percent of rural appraisals exceed the associated contract price by more than 5 percent. The study was based on GSE loan acquisitions from 2012 to 2016.Moreover, given the bias found in appraisals, some researchers have considered including automated...